Remote Customer Service: How to Create a Winning Customer Service Team

A study that was released in early 2018 revealed that businesses lose about $75 billion every year as a direct result of poor customer service. That astonishingly high monetary figure has forced many small and large business owners alike to rethink the way they’re handling their company’s customer service.

Some businesses that didn’t take customer service seriously enough before have invested in remote customer service departments that specialize in fielding calls from customers. They’re responsible for doing everything from making changes to customers’ accounts to issuing refunds to customers who are unhappy with products and services.

Is your company thinking about creating a remote customer service department? Before you do, you should make sure you hire the right people to fill it out. It’ll ensure you’re able to provide top-notch service to your customers.

Check out some tips for creating a winning remote customer service team below.

Look for People Who Are Warm and Friendly

When your customers call on you with a question or complaint, they don’t want to end up on the phone with someone who sounds like they’re having an awful day. They want to talk to someone who is warm, friendly, and ready to help them out.

Your remote customer service team members should be prepared to greet your customers kindly and treat them with the respect they deserve. To do this, they need to be friendly people who enjoy communicating with others.

Talk to those who wish to be on your customer service team on the phone when figuring out if they’re a good fit. If you can hear the smile on their face when you’re speaking with them, that’s definitely a good sign.

Make Sure Your Team Is Filled With People Who Like to Listen

If your goal is to make customer service a priority for your company, fill your remote customer service team with people who like to listen.

Being a good listener is an essential skill for customer service representatives because reps are going to be doing a lot of listening on the phone. They’re going to spend the majority of the calls they take listening to customers before working through their issues.

When interviewing potential candidates for your customer service team, see how well they listen to you on the phone. It’ll let you know if they’re right for your team.

Patience Should Be a Skill All Your Customer Service Representatives Have

The last thing you want one of your customer service reps to do is to lose their cool on the phone with a customer. No matter how upset a customer might be with your company, your reps cannot, under any circumstances, get into shouting matches with them or show the slightest bit of anger.

This won’t always be easy. Your remote customer service representatives are going to spend their days hearing things from customers like:

“You aren’t any help at all! Let me speak to a manager who knows what they’re actually talking about!”

Under the toughest conditions, your customer service reps need to remain cool, calm, and collected. They should practice patience at all times, even when customers lose their tempers and yell at them.

With alldayPA services, you can rest assured knowing that your customer service reps will always be patient with customers.

Steer Clear of Anyone Who Seems to Be Too Pushy or Aggressive

In addition to being patient, a good customer service rep also needs to know how to be assertive and firm without being too pushy or aggressive.

You obviously don’t want to have customer service reps on your remote team who let customers walk all over them. This could cost your company a lot of money and give people the impression that you don’t stand behind your products and services.

At the same time, you don’t want customer service reps who disrespect customers and give off the impression that your company doesn’t care about its customers. They need to straddle the fine line between the two worlds and assert themselves when necessary.

Test the Problem Solving Skills of Those on Your Team

When you’re interviewing potential customer service reps for your remote team, come up with different scenarios that will force them to problem solve on the fly.

For example, tell them you’re a customer who just received a product in the mail that was broken. You want a replacement product sent to you right away and you want a second product for free for your troubles. If you don’t get it, you’re going to take your business elsewhere and leave a bad online review for the company on social media.

Ask them: “What would you do?”

Your customer service candidate should be able to work through the problem at hand. If they’re able to come up with an acceptable response to this issue, they’ll likely do a good job once they start facing real problems on the job.

Teach Your Customer Service Team About Your Products and Services

The toughest part about hiring a remote customer service team is that you have no idea if they’re familiar with your products and services or not. For all you know, they’re just hearing about them for the first time.

To get around this problem, educate your remote team about the products and services you have to offer. Make sure they know the ins and outs of the products and services so they can answer customer questions and complaints accordingly.